As one dance scene ages out, the future’s electronic insurgence makes introduction at Colors
DJ Billo performing at a Colors show // Photo by Mark Serrano
If you like electronic music, forget John Summit.
There’s a local series of parties blasting music you can’t find anywhere but Kansas City—literally. Go to a Colors show, and you’ll hear Balkan pop, gqom, and other global genres from hometown DJs.
Richard Ortiz—respiratory therapist by day, RiTZ by night—launched Colors in May 2025. Earlier that year, he’d stumbled across an electronic cumbia set on YouTube. The ways in which cumbia rhythms weaved with house and trance beats had struck him.
The rest, Ortiz says, was “total serendipity.”
A friend of his, SirQueen, happened to offer a cumbia set for Ortiz’s weekly music livestream, Wacky Wednesday. With the desire to see this on more than just a stream, Ortiz tapped into a network of friends and collaborators to put together an entire show—originally built on that idea to see SirQueen play the set he’d been looking for.
Since then, the motivation behind Colors has expanded into the goal of marrying DJ culture, electronic music, and even more genres that Ortiz felt lacked representation. For each show, he’s made a point of never having an all-male lineup and always including a queer performer.
Photo by Mark Serrano
DJ Billo
As an organizer with Sunrise Movement, it isn’t much of a surprise that DJ Billo would have an organizing role as one of Colors’ co-creators.
“But it’s less about being an organizer,” Billo explains, “and more of who I am that’s led me to being an organizer.”
By this, she means putting cultural sincerity first, and creating intentional spaces for music that makes people feel seen yet connected to different ideas and cultures.
She’s from South KC, with parents who immigrated from Pakistan. Growing up, Billo was friends and neighbors with people from a variety of backgrounds—from Palestine to Mexico—and that experience informs much of what she plays now. At a Billo set, you’ll often hear what the people close to her are listening to. At one show, for example, she wanted to feature music in Arabic and turned to friends for new recommendations:
“And so, I’ve had a few other friends who were Iranian or South Asian, and they were like, ‘Oh my god. I never thought in my life I would hear that song in Kansas City at a club,” and that was a touching moment for me.”
That’s what excites her most: expanding international sounds in as authentic a way as possible. In fact, Billo sees it and the mission of Colors, as the future—with some cautions in mind.
“I hope Kansas City’s shift into highlighting international music really is grounded in community, especially because of everything we’re experiencing with attacks on immigrants and people who aren’t white,” Billo says. “We definitely have to reckon with the fact that so much of the music we have is a result of people who don’t look like us, people who are different from us.”
Localuva // Photo by Nigel King
Localuva
Localuva grew in a Dominican household, with an upbringing of dancing, parties, and music—genres like raggaeton, bachata, and merengue. Quick, bass-heavy, Afro-leaning drums were a favorite of hers, too.
But it wasn’t until 2023, when she was 19 years old, that Localuva got into DJing and figured most of it out by herself. As with Ortiz and other Colors performers, it was a matter of wanting to play what she wanted to hear.
This approach brought her to other people searching for something in common, and in turn to Colors.
“I think Kansas City is a great scene for building engagement and community—everybody recognizes everyone else’s work and goes out of their way to support it. We’re good at that, being able to rely on your community and know that they have your back,” Localuva explains.
Often, she puts her sets together with the help and highlighting of friends: zine and tattoo artists, photographers, and more. She recalls, too, a Latin house event where proceeds went to Advocates for Immigrant Rights and Reconciliation. From there, she’s found a way to expand the club’s boundaries while keeping its community close.
“It’s kind of silly, just because it’s music at the end of the day, but that sense of community and self-identity really does guide me through life,” says Localuva. “The world isn’t as big as you think, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”
LOV3 // Photo by Nigel King
LOV3
At a LOV3 set, shaking ass is nearly as important as where the ass shaking comes from.
She plays techno and house, mixing in Jersey club and other genres stemming from Black culture—all of which she describes as spreading the gospel, mentioning the history of dance spaces made for Black and Latino communities shut out from the mainstream.
This began with a gripe during her time at KU, where LOV3 found the nightlife to be lackluster in terms of diversity, both in terms of sound and faces at the club.
“They would drop ‘Mo Bamba’ in the club after playing Taylor Swift for 40 minutes, and everyone freaks out. But then it’s like, you can’t appreciate the Black people in front of you?”
She bought a DJ board with her financial aid refund, “and it’s been up ever since.” LOV3 has performed at gigs across the metro and played support Zach Fox’s Uptown Theater set last year.
Before joining Colors as a performer, meanwhile, LOV3 attended earlier shows to see friends’ sets. From there, she wanted in.
“The overall club scene is okay, but there’s some tweaking to be done. I’m one of those people who are like, ‘I’m gonna create the change I want to see.’ And I think Colors is holding that space to segue between the new and the old. ”
The dance floor, for LOV3, has become a reflection of society. To be a DJ is to be a revolutionary. And above DJs, dancers. Alongside Colors, she’s helped put together a no phones “anti-surveillance” party and a series called 808she, for queer women of color in the business of ass shaking.
“If you can be in a space with other people and judgement is present—if you’re able to rebel against that judgement—I think that in itself is one of the biggest forms of resistance,” LOV3 says. “I think that’s a small step against being complacent in a watchful society.”
Photo by Nigel King
“Nightlife needs a spark”
Last year, a headline in The Kansas City Star claimed that local nightlife “needs a spark,” having spoken to established acts including Casio McCombs, DJ Doop, and DJ Nick Davis.
A large part of this comes from the understandable financial concerns for brick-and-mortar venues, as the task of maintaining large, consistent crowds is key to staying afloat—and in turn, keeping local DJs afloat. It’s a matter, too, of having the room to experiment in front of these crowds and push for distinct identities in KC’s soundscape.
Davis tells The Star that one solution “starts at the top, with venue operators seeing the importance of community when hosting events.”
He adds: “There should be all types of [parties] like Bacardi is doing this and Casamigos is throwing a party here, Nike is doing an event. It should be, more of that should become the standard.”
But globally, the commercialization of club spaces has sparked debate across the broader nightlife culture—over which Billo, LOV3, and Localuva expressed concern too.
“I feel like bigger brands or corporations, they have some sort of flow going, but it wasn’t necessarily selective to locals and contributing to everybody’s engagement,” Localuva says. “There are some spaces where the culture’s not in it anymore and not really giving back to the community that got these spaces where they are.”
Still, there’s some truth to the need for money, even in the experimental safe space of a Colors show.
“We operate at a significantly high cost. My goal with the first shows was, I want this to be such an awesome party that people have to come back and feel like they’re missing out if they don’t,” Ortiz explains. “The challenge is, I want every single one of our artists and contributors to get paid their fair share. We’ve been breaking even, but we want to cross the threshold where we can make enough to do more and be a little more dedicated.
“Right now, I’m calling you from my regular job. I work every single day, and every bit of it is to fund the next party, hoping to build this thing and hoping that it might take off.”
Photo by Nigel King
For the culture
Colors’ independent, underground approach is a counter-vision in growing the KC scene, a vision that pushes against the creative boundaries of local electronic music, and the possibilities of a night out. Especially for those in the margins.
As Ortiz and his collaborators build from the bottom up—even working with attendees when ticket prices are an obstacle to entry—they’ve attracted a crowd that is young and rowdy, reflecting a form of nightlife that is true to its roots: release, resistance, and safety.
“The people that come aren’t coming to look good or be seen looking good,” Ortiz says. “They’re there to enjoy the music and really let loose.”
This isn’t to leave older performers out of the fold, either. Billo mentions finding inspiration and mentorship from SirQueen, DJ Amanda, and Janet Azimuth.
“We always try to include someone who’s really seasoned in the scene, to give them an opportunity to highlight their talents and all the things they have learned and seen,” she says.
All things considered, perhaps Colors is doing something right.
The first party pulled an attendance of about 200. Since then, they’ve been climbing over 300. And on May 23, Colors will throw the first party of its 2026 residency at In the Lowest Ferns—one year after the series’ first show. Plus, they’ve announced a collaboration with Sporting KC for a World Cup concert series in June, alongside the likes of Third Eye Blind, Gym Class Heroes, and Coco & Breezy.
“Feels like an alternate reality,” Ortiz says of the collaboration.
But what is a movement like Colors, if not one that brings the alternative into being? Better worlds are possible, and apparently so are better EDM blow-outs.
